Pill mills thriving in New Jersey

A chiropractic office in a seemingly abandoned building in Camden was home to what state investigators say was a "painkiller prescription emporium."

That detail is part of a blistering 74-page state report issued Wednesday, culminating a two-year investigation by New Jersey Commission of Investigation.

Among the findings: Underground drug networks, some with ties to the Russian mafia, put hundreds of thousands of addictive pain pills, including Oxycodone, on the streets; corrupt doctors bilked Medicaid that funded the mob; and homeless addicts got illegal drugs and $10 gift cards.

In Camden alone, an estimated $10 million in drugs were funneled to the street, the report said. The depth of the problems stretches far beyond poverty pockets where drugs are more the expected than exception.

Although the report focuses on illegal drugs fueling an epidemic of addictions across the state, New Jersey is not unique. Officials say an ongoing drug problem is sweeping the nation.

"What once was a menacing background narrative centered narrowly around subculture-based substances like opium, morphine and heroin has exploded into a mainstream horror story whose first chapter often begins with pill bottles in the average household medicine cabinet," the report says.

"With high-quality heroin readily available on New Jersey streets today at roughly the same price as a pack of cigarettes — cheaper than painkilling pills of similar strength and effect — it should be no great surprise that the road to addiction has evolved full circle," the report said.

In addition to Camden, investigators in Newark found an operation so large that Medicaid patients and drug addicts were regularly taken by a van to a medical center where they were given prescription painkillers as part of a scheme to bilk government health insurance.

"Some medical management companies with names that incorporate benign terms like 'pain management' and 'wellness' have transformed street corner drug dealing into an orderly and a seemingly ordinary business endeavor."

Some of the reforms proposed by state officials include stronger oversight of the medical community, tougher financial and criminal penalties for offenders, and a statewide task force to coordinate drug investigations.

"Even as law enforcement authorities, public health officials, social workers, treatment counselors, schools and families redouble their efforts to combat the purveyors and consequences of this predatory scourge, it continues to evolve in ways that few could have imagined when the so-called war on drugs was launched more than four decades ago," the report said.